The Ship Model Forum

EMERGENCY RUDDER, wow, that's fascinating - thanks Bill

Nice to hear from you in real time - hi from Melbourne

Bill

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Keep The Faith Gentlemen and Watch the Offside

I've also heard of no account of her carrying such an emergency rudder.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

You sure that's not the aircraft recovery mat?

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

I heard its a Jury rudder, The IJN started adding them to all their capitol warships after losing the Fuso due to rudder loss in battle. Mario

Yes. The Japanese abandoned the recovery mat system sometime between when Yamato was designed and when she was completed.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

But there is no specific account of Yamato carrying it that I know of. Musashi has already sunk when Fuso's loss could be analyzed. Latest model and CG renditions of the ship from Japan do not show a jury rudder. There is not a hint of any jury rudder in any of the photos of the ship I've seen.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

thanks for the input guys

Bill

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Keep The Faith Gentlemen and Watch the Offside

I never said that Musashi had this Rudder , since the time frame you are correct, If the Yamato ever had one it would have been in its last sortie, starboard side as depicted here. There are no photos at the end that show the rudder on the starboard side, But then again there are no photos that show the starboard side at the end clearly. to prove it ever or never existed. For some reason, Aerial combat photos seem to favor the port side. I wouldn't rely on Yamato models current or past as proof to the way the ship actually looked like, Therefore just because it does not show the rudder does not mean that it was never there. Bottom line, you don't know if its there or not. The writer asked what object was depicted, As its defined on other IJN ships, its a rudder. Mario

If it is, it bespeaks a certain lack of confidence on the part of command and the operators.

Yamato already had a primary/secondary rudder system.

They would have been better off (in 1945) bolting AA guns everywhere they could fit. There were plenty on Aoba and Tone which would have been better off at sea than on immobile wrecks.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Werner, you needn't insinuate plot to cover grave defects whenever you hear anything new about these ships. you are sounding more like a pundit than one with detached interest in history. Yamato was effectively a single rudder design. The main rudder was very large and powerful, while the secondary rudder was too small to hold the ship on a steady course. Yamato certainly wasn't the only battleship of WWII era to have only a single dominant rudder and being unable to steer without it. KGV, Vanguard, Richelieu and Dunkirk all had this trait. Furthermore I know of no case where a twin rudder vessel retained effective steering control after absorbing a hit that would have taken out a single rudder vessel's steering. So the redundancy provided by twin rudders may not have as much real survival value as imagined.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

I was only saying the priorities were messed up. Yamato already had a better rudder than Fuso. I wonder if the Navy Staff would have even been informed of Fuso at this stage. The Japanese reports of Suriago are fragmented and contradictory even after 60 years. There is still debate as to which ship is Fuso and which is Yamashiro in the last hours....

After years of war, plenty of Japanese ships were defective. For example, Shigure had two steering failures between 6/44 and 12/44. They didn't order jury rudders for the remaining destroyers (that I know of).

I think this platform has other uses that we don't know about.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Japanese sources only state that it is an emergency rudder. The secret, namely that is was a sumo ring, is kept under wraps to this day because otherwise the hunt would be on for all those photographs of high-ranking officers in diapers slapping one another across the face. How unseemly!

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Gernot Hassenpflug
Find out how it works, then functionality and limits

I've wondered about the platforms to but never understood exactly what they were for. I've always scratchbuilt and added them to my IJN models just because I think they look cool. The Pitroad Unryu actually has one molded on a fret as part of the kit. This makes me think that historically it carried one since Pitroad when through the trouble to make one, but that is just speculation on my part. The Unryu was an aircraft carrier deployed late in the war.



Oh... and I thought it was to be lowered into the water and used a floating platform for pearl divers.

I looked through Skulski's Anatomy of the ship Yamato this evening, and the rudder or platform is not present in any drawings, and it is not mentioned in the text. Of course, Skulski's book is now twenty years old, and the great increase in interest in our hobby has brought out much new material. The AOTS is in need of update to reflect this new information.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Based on other obvious errors in the "show models" that featured a jury rudder, I believe the notion that Yamato carried a jury rudder dates to well before the Skulski book. The jury rudder was already abandoned in the Skulski book. All the Japanese publications that post dates Skulski, and that corrects many erros in Skulski book, agrees with Skulski in not depicting any jury rudder.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

I just want to ask another, and in this Case maybe a dumb Question:
Is it possible to disassemble a demolished Rudder and mount a wooden Jury Rudder at high Seas on a Capital Ship? Lets leave out Weather and Sea Conditions....

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The idea seemed to have been to use the wooden platform as a drogue to steer the ship, not to replace the damaged rudder.

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Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.

Chuck is correct - it was designed to be dragged behind the ship, like a drogue or sea anchor.

Amagi at commissioning with E-rudder (photo was colorized by Alex Forster)

Though this is not the case like the others said already about this particular rudder...I believe that a few USN cases existed in the Guadalcanal and Solomons Campaign in which ships, anchored, were able to produce wooden bows to replace those taken out by the impacts of Long-Lance torpedoes.

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"Build few and build fast,
Each one better than the last"
John Fisher

ah ok...now i see a little more clearer what is meant. The Use as Sea Anchor or Drift Anchor make Sense.
The Construction of a Bow as provisional arrangement to improve Seaworthiness sounds achievable. The Patch has to cover a Leak.
It was impossible for me to imagine how that wooden Piece should be connected with the Steering-Mechanics of a demolished Rudder somehow, at the open Sea.

Thanks for Clearing!

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